Wildlife of South America

South America is the most biodiverse continent on Earth. It holds the Amazon, the largest tropical rainforest; the Pantanal, the largest tropical wetland; the Andes, the longest continental mountain range; the Atacama, the driest non-polar desert; and the Galápagos Islands, where Charles Darwin found clues that helped him develop the theory of evolution by natural selection. Colombia, Peru, Brazil and Ecuador are each among the most species-rich countries on the planet.

For travellers, South America offers some of the best wildlife viewing anywhere: jaguars along the rivers of the Pantanal, macaws at clay licks in Peru, penguins and whales in Patagonia, and fearless wildlife on the Galápagos.

South America at a glance

Habitats and the wildlife they support

The Amazon rainforest

The Amazon covers around 5.5 million km² of rainforest across nine countries, with Brazil holding about 60 percent. It is thought to contain about one in ten of the world’s known species. Its layers each have their own residents: harpy eagles, macaws and toucans in the canopy; sloths, howler, spider and squirrel monkeys, tamarins and kinkajous in the trees; jaguars, ocelots, tapirs, peccaries, agoutis and giant armadillos on the ground. Every year, rivers rise by up to 10 metres or more and flood the forest for months, and fish swim among the treetops, eating fruit and spreading seeds.

The rivers hold pink river dolphins (botos), giant otters, black caimans, green anacondas, arapaima (one of the largest freshwater fish), piranhas and electric eels. Around 2,500 to 3,000 fish species have been described from the Amazon basin, more than any other river system.

The Pantanal

The Pantanal of Brazil, Bolivia and Paraguay is the largest tropical wetland on Earth, covering roughly 150,000 to 180,000 km². It floods in the wet season (about November to March) and drains in the dry season, when animals concentrate along rivers and pools. This openness makes it the best place in the world to see wild jaguars, which hunt caimans and capybaras along the riverbanks of the Cuiabá and its tributaries. The Pantanal also has millions of yacare caimans, capybaras, marsh deer, giant otters, hyacinth macaws (the largest parrot in the world), jabiru storks and giant anteaters.

The Cerrado and Llanos

The Cerrado of central Brazil is the most biodiverse savanna in the world and one of the most threatened, with about half already converted to farmland. It is home to maned wolves, giant anteaters, giant armadillos, rheas and red-legged seriemas. The Llanos grasslands of Venezuela and Colombia flood seasonally and support capybaras, Orinoco crocodiles, scarlet ibises and huge numbers of wading birds.

The Andes

The Andes run for about 7,000 km along the western edge of the continent. Cloud forests on their slopes are among the richest habitats for birds, orchids and frogs anywhere. Above the tree line, the páramo and puna grasslands hold vicuñas, guanacos, llamas and alpacas, viscachas, Andean foxes, pumas and the endangered Andean mountain cat. The spectacled bear, South America’s only bear, lives in Andean cloud forests. High-altitude salt lakes on the Altiplano host three species of flamingo, including the James’s and Andean flamingos.

The vicuña is a conservation success. It was hunted for its fine wool until only about 10,000 remained in the late 1960s. Protection and community-managed shearing, which harvests wool from live animals, have brought numbers back to several hundred thousand.

The Atlantic Forest

The Atlantic Forest once ran along Brazil’s coast and into Paraguay and Argentina. Only about 12 percent of it remains, yet it still holds a remarkable number of species found nowhere else, including the golden lion tamarin, muriquis (the largest monkeys in the Americas), and hundreds of endemic birds. The golden lion tamarin fell to a few hundred wild animals in the 1970s and has recovered to several thousand through reintroduction and forest restoration.

Patagonia and the southern cone

The windswept steppe and mountains of Argentina and Chile shelter pumas, guanacos, Darwin’s rheas, Andean condors and huemul deer. Torres del Paine in Chile is now one of the best places in the world to see wild pumas. The Atlantic coast holds huge colonies of Magellanic penguins and elephant seals, and southern right whales calve in the bays of Península Valdés.

The Galápagos Islands

About 1,000 km off Ecuador’s coast, the volcanic Galápagos Islands were never connected to the mainland. Animals that arrived by sea or air evolved into unique forms, and because they evolved without large predators, many show little fear of people. Highlights include the Galápagos giant tortoises (a group of species, one per island or volcano), marine iguanas (the only lizards that feed in the sea), land iguanas, Galápagos penguins (the only penguins that live at the equator), flightless cormorants, blue-footed boobies, waved albatrosses, Galápagos sea lions and Darwin’s finches.

Iconic mammals

The jaguar is the largest cat in the Americas and has the strongest bite relative to its size of any big cat. Unlike most cats, it often kills by biting through the skull. Jaguars have lost about half of their original range. In 2021 they were reintroduced to Argentina’s Iberá Wetlands, where they had been absent for about 70 years.

The capybara is the largest rodent in the world, weighing up to about 65 kg. It is semi-aquatic and can stay underwater for several minutes.

The giant otter, up to about 1.8 m long, lives in family groups that defend stretches of river. It was hunted for its pelt to near extinction by the 1970s and is still Endangered.

Birds

South America has more bird species than any other continent, over 3,000. Highlights include:

• Andean condor, Vulnerable, one of the heaviest flying birds, with a wingspan over 3 m.
• Harpy eagle, Vulnerable, which hunts sloths and monkeys in the rainforest canopy.
• Hyacinth macaw, Vulnerable, and the scarlet, blue-and-yellow and red-and-green macaws that gather at clay licks in southeastern Peru.
• Hoatzin, a strange leaf-eating bird whose chicks have claws on their wings.
• Toucans, cock-of-the-rock, tanagers and more than 300 species of hummingbirds, most of them in the Andes.
• Magellanic, Humboldt and Galápagos penguins.
• Darwin’s finches, whose beak shapes adapted to different foods on each Galápagos island.

Reptiles and amphibians

• Green anaconda, the heaviest snake in the world; large females can weigh well over 100 kg.
• Black caiman, the largest predator in the Amazon.
• Galápagos giant tortoises, which can live for well over 100 years.
• Marine iguana, found only in the Galápagos.
• Poison dart frogs. The golden poison frog of Colombia is one of the most toxic animals known; Indigenous hunters used the toxins of related frogs on blowgun darts.
• Glass frogs, with see-through skin on their bellies.

Marine and freshwater life

• Southern right whales at Península Valdés, Argentina, from about June to December.
• Orcas at Punta Norte, Península Valdés, which deliberately strand themselves on beaches to catch sea lion pups, mostly from March to April.
• The Humboldt Current, which feeds huge numbers of anchovies, seabirds, sea lions and penguins along Peru and Chile.
• Arapaima, piranhas, electric eels and thousands of other freshwater fish species.

Great wildlife spectacles and when to see them

Top wildlife destinations

For planning a Galápagos trip, see our Galápagos Islands wildlife guide.

Conservation: threats and successes

The main threats

• Deforestation of the Amazon, mostly for cattle pasture and soy, concentrated along the southern and eastern “arc of deforestation”. Scientists warn that losing too much forest could push parts of the Amazon to turn into dry savanna.
• Fire, which has increased with drought and land clearing, including record fires in the Pantanal in 2020 and 2024.
• Illegal gold mining, which releases mercury into rivers.
• Wildlife trafficking, particularly of parrots, songbirds, reptiles and jaguar parts.
• Invasive species on the Galápagos, such as rats, goats and blackberry.
• Dams on Amazon tributaries, which block fish migrations.

Successes worth knowing

• The vicuña has recovered from about 10,000 to several hundred thousand animals.
• The golden lion tamarin has been brought back from a few hundred to several thousand.
• Iberá Wetlands in Argentina, one of the world’s most ambitious rewilding projects, has reintroduced jaguars, giant anteaters, pampas deer, peccaries and green-winged macaws.
• Galápagos restoration, including removal of goats and rats from islands such as Pinzón, has allowed giant tortoises to breed successfully in the wild again.
• Indigenous territories in the Amazon have some of the lowest deforestation rates in the region.

For researchers

• Charles Darwin Research Station, Santa Cruz Island, Galápagos.
• Cocha Cashu Biological Station in Manu National Park, Peru.
• Tiputini Biodiversity Station, Yasuní, Ecuador.
• National Institute of Amazonian Research (INPA) in Manaus and the Mamirauá Institute, Brazil.
• Data sources: MapBiomas (land-cover change), PRODES (Amazon deforestation monitoring by Brazil’s INPE), IUCN Red List, GBIF and eBird.

Test yourself

How well do you know the wildlife of South America? Take the quick quiz.

Frequently asked questions

Where is the best place to see jaguars? The northern Pantanal around Porto Jofre in Brazil, from July to October, where sighting rates on boat trips are very high.

What animals live in the Amazon rainforest? Jaguars, sloths, tapirs, many species of monkey, pink river dolphins, giant otters, anacondas, caimans, piranhas, macaws, toucans, harpy eagles, poison dart frogs and thousands of insect species.

When is the best time to visit the Galápagos? Any time. December to May is warmer with calmer seas; June to November is cooler, with richer marine life and more active seabirds.

What is the largest animal in South America? On land, the South American tapir, which can weigh up to about 300 kg. In the sea, visiting blue whales are the largest.

Why is South America so biodiverse? A combination of tropical climate, the Andes creating many different habitats at different altitudes, the vast Amazon basin, and a long history of isolation from other continents.

Explore more

• Animal profiles: Jaguar, Capybara, Sloth, Giant Otter, Galápagos Giant Tortoise
• Travel: Galápagos Islands wildlife guide
• Learn: Island biogeography, Evolutionary ecology

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